The UK Squatters Movement 1968-1980

Kesia Reeve

Introduction

On 1st December 1968 a small group of homeless people and libertarian anarchists calling themselves the London Squatters Campaign occupied the rooftop of a luxury block of flats in East London to protest against the inherent contradiction between empty property and homelessness. This event is generally acknowledged to have marked the beginning of the UK squatters' movement which, over the next 15 years, transcended local protest activity to become a national social movement, with tens of thousands of people housing themselves in empty property across the UK[1]. By no means the first squatters’ movement the UK had witnessed (there were movements after both the first and second world war, also involving homeless families and left wing political activists)it was the most sustained, and found parallels in squatters’ movement across Europe.

Like other social movements of the era, the squatters' movement was of immense social and political importance. Many participants are in positions of power and influence today (in journalism, architecture, environment, charitable bodies, lobbying organisations, local and national politics) and have taken the ideas and ideologies of the squatters' movement with them into these professions. Houses (indeed streets and communities) once earmarked for demolition to make way for roads or blocks of flats are still standing today because squatters occupied them in the 1960’s and 1970’s, influencing the shape of the local urban environment and of housing supply. And housing co-operatives and associations which have accommodated hundreds of people over the past 30 years would not have existed were it not for squatters in that era.

The social movements which emerged in the 1960s – of which squatters’ movements are examples typically overlooked by social movement scholars –prompted renewed interest in collective action amongst social theorists. While the rationality of collective action, cost/benefit analyses, and the mobilisation process continued to absorb the enquiries of their American counterparts, European scholars developed their theories of social movements in an exciting new direction. Theorised as a product of the evolution of advanced capitalist societies, and of the associated shift in the loci of power and conflict which rendered the working class and labour movements less relevant, these emerging social movements (often termed 'new social movements')were hailed as the new forces of social change.

Much of this work focused on what was ‘new’- about contemporary society and about the social movementsemerging from it.In particular, the culturally oriented goals of the new social movements were contrasted with the traditional concernsof 'old' social movements, rooted in class inequalities and differential access to material goods.Such concerns, it was argued had little relevance in a post-industrial society. The debate has progressed, acknowledging that traditional concerns are sometimes present, albeit peripherally. However, the direction of this debate increasingly leaves behind any questioning of the dominant analysis of the movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s, suggesting instead that new social movements have been superseded by a third generation of movements (global movements, or global justice movements), in which themes common to traditional class rooted movements are sometimes present.[2]

I am certainly not the first to point out that this body of theory suffered somewhat from a cultural myopia, serving to ignore some salient characteristics of contemporary collective action. The criticisms levied at this interpretation of social movements have highlighted themes typical of traditional movements found in new social movements (as well as pointing to themes typical of new social movements in more traditional collective action although this is rarer),suggesting that the break between 'new' and 'old' movements cannot be sustained.[3]

This paper discusses the squatters' movement in the UK and in doing so it demonstrates the co-existence of traditional social welfaregoals and political action directed at state institutions, and culturally oriented concerns and practices. We will see that the squatters' movement was a new social movement in every sense, but it was also a political movement,born of a sense of injustice and a desire to improve the material (in this case housing) conditions of people in need, seeking to effect change in living conditions and standards by confronting policy makers and state institutions.

The paper draws on in-depth interviews with 23 individuals who squatted in the 1960's and 1970's or who were active in the squatters' movement (interviews were conducted in the late 1990s), and detailed analysis of 430 primary documents produced by squatters between 1968 and 1980. These documents were amassed from the small personal archives of interviewees and other contacts and included newsletters, pamphlets, leaflets, minutes of meetings, press releases and correspondence. Data collection focused on London although squatting took place across the UK. This research took place over four years and was undertaken as part of a PhD.

Understanding Social Movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s

The explosion of social movements and protest activity in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s demanded urgent empirical scrutiny and a new theoretical framework for understanding collective action. These movements – the civil rights, anti-war, and women’s movements, for example – appeared qualitatively different to any collective action previously witnessed, their very proliferation in itself unique and prompting some to suggest that we had entered a ‘movement society’.[4] The conceptual tools of classical Marxist analysis of conflict popular amongst European scholars were deemed no longer adequate to explain this apparently new and distinct phenomenon.[5]

This was an exciting time for collective action and social movement theory and, in Europe at least, a new paradigm emerged. The social movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s, it was suggested, were products of the evolution of advanced capitalism, a society which was broadly termed, ‘post-industrial’ but which some theorists choose to term ‘complex’, ‘programmed’ , and ‘advanced’.[6] Whatever the specific variations of this paradigm, a shared thesis emerged that the nature of production in post-industrial society had shifted away from the manufacturing based production of material goods to the technological production of cultural goods via knowledge based industries such as the mass media and science and technology.[7] Specifically, these cultural goods, also referred to as symbolic goods, cultural commodities, signs, or dominant cultural codesare representations, modes of behaviour, norms, orientations and so on which are produced, transformed and moulded through production and distribution.[8] In a society where production is no longer material but cultural, and where 'society produces the cultural models by which it functions', the traditional conflict between capital and labour thus begins to vanish.[9] Where the technological production of symbolic and cultural goods replaces economic production, so the loci of power and domination in post-industrial society was said to have shifted into this domain, as did the movements and actors seeking to effect change.

New social movements, were thus conceived as the ‘bearers of new social and cultural projects’, in a ‘post-class politics’ society where their concerns, interests, and challenges had moved beyond (or away from) traditional economic or class issues and boundaries towards cultural concerns, where quality of life and identify issues emerging from the modernisation process of western societies replaced an emphasis on material gain.[10] The nature and field of conflict had shifted from traditionally conceived class conflict centred on domination located in labour relations and the work place, to cultural conflict focused on raising ‘cultural challenges to the dominant language, to the codes that organize information and shape social practices’.[11] Touraine conceived this as a struggle for control of historicity, over the cultural models by which society functions, while Castells suggested similarly that (urban) social movements were developing their own meanings in contradiction to the structurally dominant meaning. For Habermas and others (e.g. Eder) they were defending ‘endangered lifestyles’, threatened by the ‘colonization of the lifeworld’.[12]

The social movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s were not, then, attempting to create a new type of society but were asserting the ‘right to have a personal life-style and life history’.[13] Practices such as consciousness raising and group therapy are pointed to as examples of the ways in which the concern with issues of identity are manifest.[14] Similarly several scholars point to the women’s movement as challenging male dominated lifestyles, divisions of labour, the nuclear family, traditional images of the ‘feminine nature’ and as playing a role in changing the goals and values of society.[15] Melucci, meanwhile talks of the right to ‘be’ rather than the right to ‘have’ in post-material society.[16] This ‘new’ form of conflict is also theorised in terms of the normative and moral as opposed to the material but, either way, stands opposed to conflicts over the distribution and production of material resources, or goods.[17]

A departure from past collective action was also found in the organisational form and socio-political location of the new social movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s. They were said to operate a fluid, directly participatory structure which was informal and eschewed hierarchy.[18]Favouring decentralised, participatory structures which are more democratic and open, they operated on a grass roots level through loosely federated associations which move away from leadership, power and hierarchy.[19] Kitschelt, for example, argues that new social movements invoke a ‘communitarian democratic theory against the contemporary practice of competitive elite democracy’.[20] This organisational form is said by some to be an end in itself, a message to the rest of society of the changes they hope to affect for the future.[21] Visible mobilisation thus becomes secondary to cultural expression, and emerges only briefly around a specific issue before dying away. [22] Where new social movements do mobilise they are said to favour certain types of action, rejecting traditional lobbying or pressure group tactics in favour of unconventional direct action.[23] Through both the use of unconventional ‘protest’ action, and action through lifestyle practice new social movements are said to intentionally remain outside the parameters of established political systems and institutional frameworks, bypassing the state and existing democratic conflict solving channels, and taking action which is not state directed. [24]

The UK Squatters Movement: Objectives, Organisation and Adversaries

On December 1st 1968 a small group of homeless families and libertarian anarchists calling themselves the London Squatters Campaign occupied the rooftop of a luxury block of flats in East London. A second occupation, this time of an empty vicarage, followed on Christmas day of the same year. Designed as symbolic protest events, these occupations marked the beginning of a widespread squatters’ movement in the UK. The London Squatters Campaignsquatted a total of 17 houses in the London Borough of Redbridge during the first six months of 1969 and at least 13 homeless families were housed during this time. One of these families, a couple and their seven children, had been homeless for 12 years. Following a series of violent evictions, for which the local council was heavily criticised by the media and public, a formal agreement was reached whereby Redbridge Council licensed empty properties on a short-life basis to homeless families[25]. The London Squatters' Campaign moved on to other London boroughs where similar agreements were reached.

In the months following the first protest occupations by the London Squatters Campaign, it was primarily homeless families who squatted but increasing numbers of single people soon followed suit. Initially, this was seen in a wave of what at the time were termed ‘hippie squats’ involving groups of young people, occupying large properties for use as communes. The most well known of these began on September 15th 1969 when a group of more than 100 young people calling themselves the London Street Commune occupied a 50 room empty mansion building in London’s Hyde Park.[26]This marked the beginning of a distinction in press reporting and public sentiment, both generally sympathetic towards the squatting campaigns thus far witnessed, between ‘deserving and undeserving’ squatters, a dichotomy which prevailed and is expressed in the following from a national newspaper:

'Among the genuine homeless people who have taken to squatting as a desperate last resort there is a new army of parasites. The plight of the truly homeless who take over long-empty houses commands sympathy. The parasite squatters do not.'[27]

Interestingly, similar sentiments were also expressed by some squatters. Those squatters whose primary goal was to improve their (or other homeless people’s) housing security and living conditions as quickly as possible, relied upon the co-operation of local authorities which in turn relied upon a degree of public support and sympathy. The London Squatters Campaign issued a statement which made a distinction between people who squatted as a response to housing need (described as ‘serious’ about squatting) and those who were simply ‘amusing themselves’. The statement read:

'Those of us who advocate and organise to secure the rights of the homeless and badly housed, are concerned to change and improve society – not to amuse ourselves. We have no intention of joining in the current anti hippy chorus but we wish to stress the difference between the two types of operation'[28]

More recently, some members of the London Squatters Campaign have revised their view, suggesting that in many respects this was a false distinction. As one explained:

'We were pretty condemnatory…I think it was terrible. We should have said that these people are homeless young people too and we can understand what they are doing. We may not agree with all their actions coz some were bloody stupid….but that’s not the same thing as condemning what they are doing…you cannot condemn other people who are fighting for a better way of life and we did. And it was wrong' (Member of the London Squatters Campaign, interview)

Over the following decade or somost London boroughs, and most towns and cities across the UK, witnessed squatting. There have always been individual households squatting isolated properties but now groups of people (families, single people, lone parents, young and old) were squatting, en mass. Squatting communities sprung up in empty streets or blocks of flats which had been decanted of residents pending redevelopment or roads programmes which had not yet commenced, had been postponed or abandoned.This was the legacy of 1960's UK housing policy, where an emphasis on large scale redevelopment (demolishing swathes of housing to make way for new housing estates and flats) had been replaced by a policy of rehabilitation (improving existing property) leaving a geographical concentration of empty property. The availability of empty property is a precondition for squatting but a concentration of empty property is what sustains it: evicting one household is more difficult than evicting twenty households living side by side; defending oneself against eviction, physically and legally, is more difficult alone than with the help and support of 100 otherpeople. A critical mass provides capacity for organisation and mobilisation, and this critical mass of squatters was facilitated by the geographical concentration of empty property in the UK (and particularly in London) in the late 1960's.

It also facilitated the development of thriving communities. When squatters weren't defending themselves against eviction or campaigning against local and national housing policy and practice, they were busy setting up local businesses (wholefood shops and café's were commonplace, always in squatted buildings and usually run as cooperatives), repairing and maintaining squats, organising cultural and leisure events, and experimenting with alternative forms of living. The following extract from a squatters' newsletter describes some of these activities:

'A year ago, 27 Fonthill Road was an old shop that had been gutted three times by the council. Some people decided to reclaim it. They had lots of fun clearing rubble, fixing roofs, plumbing and painting. Then, one day in March, they took down the corrugated iron and let the sun shine in. There was a jumble sale and a puppet show.

At that time people wanted it to be a café, so that’s what it became […]The first floor was occasionally being used for parties with live bands […] We’ve also had meetings there and meals.

We had a meeting there on Sunday and people decided to get together…to compile information about squatting in the area…and to get this information into some kind of presentable form so that the caf can be used as an information centre.

We’ve got used to calling it “The Caf”, but it isn’t that; it’s a space for anyone to use and experiment with…come along on Thursday with tools, paint, curtains, ideas, musical instruments, cakes, information, tea, lino, carpets and things to heat the place with.'[29]

Freed from the constraints of conventional modes of property consumption and the power relations therein, squatters redefined (dominant) notions of household, family, work, relationships, house, space and much more. Communality and co-operation were prominent themes expressed by the movement and innovation was prevalent. Households were typically large and non-nuclear comprising groups of single people, couples and children sometimes defining themselves as one family and usually identifying as one household unit. Properties were adapted and redesigned to accommodate cultural needs, for example by creating large communal spaces, allowing households to move freely from one house to another (for example by inserting doorways into the dividing walls between several terraced houses), abandoning notions of private space, creating space for music, meditation, motorbike repair workshops and other non domestic activities. Childcare was a collective responsibility in some squats, shared between all members regardless of biological parenthood, and sexual relationships were sometimes fluid. Some squatters attempted to live without money, using exchange systems instead and in one area a work token system was developed whereby tokens were distributed for work undertaken for the benefit of the community (such as erecting barricades, house repairs, producing leaflets) which could then be exchanged for meals in the local squatters' run café.